Model Crisis

Click a node to read about it.

From the viewpoint of solving the sustainability problem, here's the most important step of them all in the Kuhn Cycle. It is imperative that scholars, environmentalists, politicians, funders, etc grasp this abstraction, because civilization is presently stuck in the Model Crisis step.

Model Crisis is the third step of the Kuhn Cycle. In this step a field's model of understanding has drifted so far the field is thrown into crisis, because they can no longer make rational decisions. Their foundation for solving their central problems has been shattered by discovery of too many anomalies their central theory cannot explain. At this point in the cycle the field's energies are best spent constructing a new model that works.

The model in crisis is the world's "social control model"

A social control model is a collection of rules describing how a unit of society works. The most common social control model is the one used by families, which is the most basic social unit. Once a social control model is perfected, it can be used over and over.

Examples of modern social control models are the ones used by school systems, countries, congregations, and corporations. Each social agent type has an unwritten and/or written set of rules that describe how that social unit should work. For example a legislative body follows the rules of a constitution and, during deliberations, follows Robert’s Rules of Order or some other set of debate rules.

The power of the concept of a social control model is that if you know what a model's rules are, two things become apparent: You can understand why that social unit behaves the way it does, such as how it may be contributing to a problem under analysis. And you can predict how the social unit will respond to changes in those rules, such as if various solutions are tried. If your analysis of the social control models involved in a particular problem are reasonably correct, then solution of the problem becomes trivial and boils down to selection of those changes to the models that have the highest probability of solving the problem in time at the lowest cost, and any other constraints that may apply.

From the viewpoint of solving the global environmental sustainability problem, the most important social control model is the one that global civilization is using to run itself. This is the model in crisis in the third step of the Kuhn Cycle: the Model Crisis step.

How seeing things this way is critical to solving the sustainability problem

The Kuhn Cycle applies not just to science but to any field or group using a shared model of understanding to solve their problems. It thus applies to nations and all nations as a whole when dealing with global problems.

Civilization is stuck in the Model Crisis step and doesn't know it. It thus is not even trying to get out. The world's problem solvers know their sustainability solutions are not working. What is their reaction? To try to create better solutions. These fail too, as we have seen for four decades now. Why are they failing? Because the model that produced the solutions is broken. It's in crisis because it can't solve the problem.

Problem solvers should thus do what scientists do once they realize they're in the Model Crisis step. They stop working on problems and shift their attention to fundamental research, where they try to fathom why the model is broken and then fix it.

A famous example was when physics was faced with a gigantic Model Crisis in the early 20th century. Here's what happened, along with a discussion of how the Model Crisis step applied:(bolding is in the original) 1

The expanding crisis prompted by the anomaly triggers a distressing period of uncertainty within the field. [the beginning go the Model Crisis step] This period of uncertainty, or "crisis" as Kuhn called it, is fertile ground for the creative impulses within the scientific community. This is a creative period of revolutionary science, during which the conventional procedure and the customary rules of normal science are relaxed. New and difference approaches to the problem are encouraged. Radical solutions to the problems are entertained as the most creative minds of science tackle the difficulties in an attempt either to alter the old paradigm radically or to introduce a new one. For a while during this period of revolutionary science, researchers live like artists and poets in a world slightly out of focus and slightly out of phase with their normal experience.

Crisis and the Emergence of Quantum Physics - It was this type of world that physicists lived in during the early part of the twentieth century, as a series of troubling anomalies challenged the existing paradigm of classical physics. These anomalies involved the study of the laws of nature as they affect matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic levels, a study that became known as quantum physics.

By the early 1920s, these anomalies had become so prevalent that they became the primary focus of the profession. It was impossible to work in physics at that time without becoming embroiled in the crisis that was brewing within the paradigm. In 1925, John Van Vleck, an American physicist and one of the primary contributors to the development of the contemporary theory of electromagnetic systems, described the crisis by comparing the attempts of various physicists to reconcile classical and quantum effects with the twists and turns of a contortionist.

What Val Vleck was referring to was one of the most famous anomalies that every threatened an existing paradigm, the anomaly described as wave-particle duality.

It may appear that sustainability problem solvers are doing what they should. They are trying to redesign their solutions and create new solutions so they work.

But that misses the point of what a Model Crisis really is. It's not your solutions that are failing. It's your method of producing solutions that's failed. Until the method itself is repaired, it will continue to produce solutions that fail.

This is a subtle point that Thwink.org has been consistently unable to communicate.

If you can spread this enormously productive insight, please do. If it spreads widely, then the world's governments and international bodies will at last start to do what fields of science do when confronted with Model Crisis: They stop solving problems and switch to fixing their paradigm so they can escape the crisis. Only after a new paradigm that explains most of the anomalies that have piled up appears (the Model Revolution step), and has been accepted (the Paradigm Change step), can the field return to Normal Science and solve its problems.

An alternative to getting the world's governments to alter their paradigm is needed because that's too big a change to expect quickly, or even at all in time to solve the sustainability problem. An attractive alternative is to realize that environmentalism is in its Pre-science phase. Its solutions are failing not because its model has drifted, but because it's never had one that worked.

This too is a subtle point that Thwink.org has been consistently unable to communicate. If you can spread this insight, please do. Seven billion people alive today, and billions more to follow, will thank you more than you will ever know.

Thomas Kuhn studied the history of paradigm change so thoroughly he pinpointed why acknowledgement that one's model is in crisis is so often delayed. On page 64 of the 1996 edition he wrote:

In science... novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a backdrop provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be observed.

Further acquaintance, however, does result in awareness of something wrong or relates the effect to something that has gone wrong before. That awareness of anomaly opens a period in which conceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalies have become the anticipated. At this point the discovery [of Model Crisis] has been completed.

Kuhn's insight is that "initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced." That is, people see what they expect or want to see.

That's where problem solvers are today. In the history of Homo sapiens, the sustainability problem is still young. It's still in it's initial stage. Thus it's no surprise the legions of problem solvers working on it have trouble noticing "novelties" or paradigm failure. They can easily see solution failure. But equating that to paradigm failure as the cause is currently beyond the ability of today's sustainability problem solvers.

Famous Model Crises of the Past

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The model that worked so well for so long failed due to barbarian invasion and over extension of the empire. Problem solvers were never able to devise a new model that worked, so the empire disintegrated.

Countless civil wars. The social contract the previously worked no longer can bring agreement, so people create the next model of agreement by force.

The way Hitler took over a democracy in the period of 1919 to 1933. Thereafter Germany was a living model in crisis, because the new Germany was unable to achieve its original goals. It was now achieving Hitler's goals because after the Enabling Act of 1933 Hitler had legal dictatorial power.

Each of the above was a social control model crisis. Model crises are not restricted to science. In fact, the most powerful application of the Kuhn Cycle is not to science. It's to the world's largest social problems, which matter far more.

Are you as concerned as we are about the rise of populust authoritarians like Donald Trump? Have you noticed that democracy is unable to solve important problems like climate change, war, and poverty? If so this film series is for you!

Why is democracy in crisis? One intermediate cause is a weakened Voter Feedback Loop. Powerful root cause forces are working to weaken the loop.

The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005. More people have contacted us about this easy to read paper and the related Dueling Loops videos than anything else on the site.

Do you every wonder why the sustainability problem is so impossibly hard to solve? It's because of the phenomenon of change resistance. The system itself, and not just individual social agents, is strongly resisting change. Why this is so, its root causes, and several potential solutions are presented.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.